Inspirational Quotes, Motivational Sayings, and Wise Words for Daily Inspiration

totality-socalled-knowledge-beliefs-casual-matters-geography-history

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.

Willard Van Orman Quine's Popular Quotes

My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see …

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum of my behavior…

- Willard Van Orman Quine

To be is to be the value of a variable.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Science is not a substitute for common sense, but an extension of it.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by…

- Willard Van Orman Quine

Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.

- Willard Van Orman Quine

To define an expression is, paradoxically speaking, to explain how to get along without it. To define is to eliminate.

- Willard Van Orman Quine